Emma Dahlin discovered Disney Princess was a real job her junior year of high school and made it a life bucket list item. She began auditioning the summer after she graduated high school. She went on a total of seven auditions before she booked the role of character performer and moved to Disney World in 2016.
Whether you’re auditioning for character performing or an equity show, the auditions require a different skill set. In character performer auditions, there may be a dance portion, a type out where you stand there and they make a cut from there, and an animation portion. The animation part of the audition is their way of describing character mining to see if you could be one of their branded characters like Mickey or Minnie.
Equity show auditions depend on which show you’re auditioning for. If it's a show you will be singing in you typically bring your own 16 cut of a song that you’d like to sing. If it's for a show you’ll be dancing you typically do a dance portion as well. For equity acting shows they provide a monologue ahead of time that you prepare and perform for them.
Emma performed as Anna in the Frozen Hollywood Studios Sing Along and Mickey’s Royal Friendship Faire show.
“That was a huge honor. I was part of the opening cast which was really cool. I didn’t expect it at all. I had been working for Disney for four months, as a character performer, and they had an in house audition.” she said.
She was part of the workshop for the show and there were a lot of renditions that they went through of the finale number due to formations and the Frozen characters.
Training to be a princess is detailed and in depth. According to Emma, actors would watch the movie and repeat every line your character said to help them understand the inflection and the way the character talked. They would learn how to storyline and improv about their story, how to do the poses, how to do makeup, and how to handle tricky conversations.
“They never expect you to be a complete replica of that character. It was never like we needed to sound exactly like Kristen Bell as Anna but they wanted you to at least get her inflections but still using your authentic voice so it sounds real,” she said.
Emma was cast as Rapunzel in Tangled the Musical for Disney Cruise Lines. The cast rehearsed in Toronto. She described the rehearsals as fun and interesting because so much of that show has technical elements with hair, and the sets.
It took the cast a week and a half to learn the whole show.
“That show is probably the hardest show on the Disney Magic to do because even for ensemble members when they’re not on stage they’re doing something off stage to like prep the set for the next scene or doing these crazy costume changes.I didn’t really have a second to breathe when I was backstage.” she said.
The hardest scene for Emma was learning I’ve got a dream because that number has a ton of cast members in it. There’s a lot of choreography which is super fun. A lot of choreography, a lot of doing stuff with the braid and there’s a lot of throwing things that are timed so people have to learn to catch it and like do all this stuff.
On the other hand, her favorite scene was when she returns which is a song that’s not in the movie but has a lot of the underscoring that is in the movie during the kingdom dance where Flynn and Rapunzel visit Corona for the first time.
Rapunzel was her favorite princess to portray. She loved how graceful, quirky, and awkward at times Rapunzel could be as well as positive and well meaning. She enjoyed getting to sing in that part of her voice and to have a beautiful love story on stage.
“ I loved getting to tell her story and they’re just so many people that love Rapunzel and have a lot of connections with her. So its; special getting to meet those people on cruise lines that would come up to me after the show,” she said.
However, the princess she identifies with the most is Anna. When she saw Frozen for the first time, she was a sophomore in high school. She has an older sister named Alexa and she is the Elsa to her Anna. They have a similar sister dynamic growing up.
“Anna’s spirit, her mannerisms, and her willingness I relate to all of that. So she definitely is the most like me,” Emma said.
Her advice for people who want to work in Disney entertainment is to be a character performer you have to be fearless and be willing to go in there and make a fool out of yourself and be silly be funny and take those big risks.
Emma was also a part of Pattycake’s Productions the Grande Mermaid, the Little mermaid reimagined through the songs of Ariana Grande. She went to an open call audition for the role of Ariel and sang Part of Your World for the directors.
”I never recorded music professionally like that before so being in their recording studio and hearing my voice played out I remember I made them tear up when I was singing the Ariana Grande Part of your world version. And that felt really special. It was one of those times working with people that like I felt really seen as a performer where they appreciated the work that I was doing,” she said.